Airman woke up as he was being raped

Updated 6:49 pm, Saturday, April 20, 2013

A former airman he said he awoke to find a training instructor having sex with him after a night of drinking on their base in Kyrgyzstan — and later learned he was positive for the virus that causes AIDS.

A doctor testified Friday that Tech. Sgt. Bobby Bass, who faces life in prison on charges of sexually assaulting the airman and abusing 16 other recruits in basic training, is not HIV-positive.

But the airman, identified as Victim 1, said his life unraveled after the incident and led to his dismissal from the Air Force on drug charges.

“He says he felt like, in a split second he had two choices: One, he could go absolutely crazy or two, he could just be quiet, and he chose to be quiet,” said Col. Polly Kenny, staff judge advocate for the 2nd Air Force in Biloxi, Miss., where Bass is on trial.

Prosecutors and the defense wrapped up their cases Friday without Bass taking the stand. He is among 33 instructors from Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland who have fallen under investigation for misconduct with 63 victims on the base.

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Bass was a military training instructor at Lackland before deploying to Kyrgyzstan, and he returned to San Antonio to resume his duties after his tour. In August 2009, he took charge of an all-male basic training flight. Most of the allegations against him involve recruits under his command at Lackland.

The Air Force says he forcibly sodomized Victim 1 between Oct. 22, 2007, and Jan. 31, 2008, at Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan. Kenny said testimony showed the incident began when Bass and other airmen went to a base recreation center and drank beer. Troops there were given a ration of two beers a day.

Bass and some of the airmen later drank liquor in the victim's room. The victim testified he drank two cups and woke up at 3 a.m. as Bass finished having sex with him.

“Sgt. Bass leaned and whispered in his ear, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to happen that way,' or something to that effect, crawled over him and left the room,” Kenny said.

Before the incident, Victim 1 was described as a good airman. Afterward, he began smoking marijuana, was kicked out of the Air Force, and abused drugs that included methamphetamine and Ecstasy. He said he did not know how he became HIV-positive but revealed the incident years later after talking with his grandmother.

Most of the Lackland allegations accuse Bass of mistreating trainees and dereliction of duty. Fourteen witnesses took the stand Thursday, a dozen of them members of Bass' training flight. The abuse occurred between Aug. 1, 2009, when the flight began basic training at Lackland, to its Oct. 31 graduation.

Kenny said one former trainee told the court that Bass ordered him into an office and told him to do pushups. He then began kicking the recruit with steel-toed boots.

“If you could envision Sgt. Bass sitting on a bed and just sort of swinging his legs straight out, he would hit him in the sternum,” she said. “(The victim) described the pain on a scale of 1 to 10 an 8.5.”

Testimony revealed that another airman became suicidal after Bass rubbed his legs in front of the flight. That incident occurred in the second week of training.

The airman, who complained of having shin splints, went on suicide watch after witnesses said Bass rubbed his legs. He left the flight and wasn't seen again.

“The particular trainee testified that that was one of the reasons he didn't want to report any maltreatment because he saw what happened to people who complained,” Kenny said of one witness. “This squeezing the shins is what I think he was referring to.”